Part 2 (1/2)

Nothing that she had yet known of homesickness could coated exile It is supposed, even by the charitable, that whatever M Heger did or did not do for Charlotte, he did everything for her genius As a matter of fact, it was at Brussels that she suffered the supreer felt the wild unknown thing stirring in her ings So little could M Heger do for it that it refused to inhabit the same house with him

She records the result of that imprisonment a feeeks after her release: ”There are tis, except a few friendshi+ps and affections, are changed fro in me, which used to be enthusiashtenment must have co that way, she had mistaken and done violence to her destiny

She went back to Haworth where it waited for her, where it had turned even the tragedy of her fa conspired to keep her there The school was given up She tells why ”It is on Papa's account; he is now, as you know, getting old, and it grieves ht I have felt for soht not to be away from him; and I feel now that it would be too selfish to leave (at least as long as Branwell and Anne are absent) to pursue selfish interests of my own With the help of God I will try to deny myself in this matter, and to wait”

And with the help of God she waited

There are three significant entries in Ehteen-forty-five ”Now I don't desire a school at all, and none of us have any great longing for it” ”I am quite contented forto do andthat everybody could be as co, and then we should have a very tolerable world of it” ”I have plenty of work on hand, and writing” This, eot Flossy; got and lost Tiger; lost the hawk, Hero, which, with the geese, was given away, and is doubtless dead”

And Anne, as nave as a little nun, writes in _her_ sealed paper: ”E-roo-chair before the fire with my feet on the fender Papa is in the parlour Tabby and Martha are, I think, in the kitchen Keeper and Flossy are, I do not knohere Little dick is hopping in his cage”

And then, ”E some poetry I wonder what it is about?”

That is the only clue to the secret that is given These childlike diaries are full of the ”Gondal Chronicles”,[A] an interminable fantasy in which for years Emily collaborated with Anne They flourished the ”Gondal Chronicles” in each other's faces, with positive bravado, trying to see which could keep it up the longer Under it all there was a mystery; for, as Charlotte said of their old play, ”Best plays were secret plays,” and the sisters kept their best hidden And then suddenly the ”Gondal Chronicles” were dropped, thepoe poems for years

Some of Emily's dated fros were sung in her house of bondage From Charlotte, in her Brussels period, not a line

[Footnote A: See _supra_, pp 193 to 209]

But at Haworth, in the years that followed her return and found her free, she wrote nearly all her maturer poems (none of them were excessively mature): she wrote _The Professor_, and close upon _The Professor_, _Jane Eyre_ In the same term that found her also, poor child, free, and at Haworth, Anne wrote _Agnes Grey_ and _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_

And Ehts_

They had found their destiny--at Haworth

Every conceivable theory has been offered to account for the novels that came so swiftly and incredibly from these three sisters It has been said that they wrote them merely to pay their debts when they found that poems did not pay It would be truer to say that they wrote them because it was their destiny to write them, and because their hour had come, and that they published them with the dimmest hope of a return

Before they knehere they were, Charlotte found herself involved in what she thought was a businesslike andfirms

The _Poems_ by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, appeared first, and nothing happened _The Professor_ travelled a happened Then, towards the end of the fourth year there came _Jane Eyre_, and Charlotte was fahts_ appeared also, and nothing happened

It was bound in the sa should have scorched and consu happened

Ellis and Acton Bell renized only by their association with the tre _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_, and association became confusion, Charlotte and Anne went up to London to prove their separate identity

Es She was unseen, undrean

But, in a spirit of reckless adventure, Charlotte and Anne walked the sevenin a thunderstor they appeared in the office at Cornhill to the ae Smith and Mr Williams With childlike innocence and secrecy they hid in the Chapter Coffee-house in Paternoster Row, and called themselves the Misses Brown When entertainment was offered them, they expressed a wish to hear Dr Croly preach They did not hear him; they only heard _The Barber of Seville_ at Covent Garden They tried, with a delicious sole an air of business, but it was really a breathless, infantile escapade of three days Three days out of four years

And in those four years poor Branwell's destiny found him also After many th to have settled down He had been tutor for two and a half years with the Robinsons at Thorp Green, in the house where Anne was a governess He was happy at first; an o

Mr Birrell has said rather unkindly that he has no use for this young man nobody had any use for him Not the editors to whom he used to write so hysterically Not the Leeds and Manchester Railroad Company

And certainly not Mrs Robinson, the lady for whom he conceived that insane and unlawful passion which has been e in the lives of the Brontes After all the agony and indignation that has gathered round this episode, it is clear enough non to the last sordid details The feverish, degenerate, utterly irresponsible Branwell not only declared his passion, but persuaded hiainst the evidence of his senses, that it was returned The lady (whohtened horribly) told her husband, who instantly disot over it